


Why Byron Really Went Rogue

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [93]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: And Let Me Show You How It's Done, Backstory, Bester Was Right, Betrayal, Bloodhounds (Babylon 5), Canon Compliant, Canon Is Really Dark Sometimes, Episode: s01e06 Mind War, Episode: s01e16 Eyes, Episode: s03e06 Dust to Dust, Episode: s04e17 The Face of the Enemy, Episode: s05e12 Phoenix Rising, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, How Normals Get Away With Assault, How Normals Get Away With Murder, How canon misled you, Human Trafficking, Justice, Mentor/Protégé, Psi Cops, Psi Corps, Rescue, Rogue Telepaths, Sit Down In That Chair Right There, The Corps Was Right, The Corps is Mother and Father, The Earth Alliance Justice System Is Broken, The Psi Corps tag is mine, Vigilante Justice, Violence, Worldbuilding, double standards, hard choices, moral crisis, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Canon says Bester ordered Byron to fire on, and destroy, an unarmed civilian transport.Canon lied.What actually happened was different - and more complicated.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	Why Byron Really Went Rogue

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Material has been added to the top about Ivanova's attempted murder of Bester in _Dust to Dust_ , and how Sheridan saw it and covered for her. Material has also been added to this section about select other relevant incidents in canon. (Non-exhaustive.)
> 
> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

I was not going to write about this incident until later in the project, after I had covered in detail how broken the Earth Alliance justice system is, and why, _especially_ when it comes to justice for telepaths - but circumstances have changed, and it has become critical that I cover this material now.

I will return to this incident in more detail later, once I have discussed more about the broken justice system, and have arrived at this time period in the story-telling. (That will take a while.)

I have already covered [A Race Through Dark Places, to Even Darker Places](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12827937), so half the stage has been set.

  * There is no "paradise planet" in the outer colonies where telepaths can be "free" - telepaths who are in that pipeline are actually being trafficked into slavery of one form or another.
  * Human traffickers - normal criminals - convince telepaths and/or their families they are smuggling them to "freedom," take their money, and sell them as slaves on planets where there are no police (or the police are in on it).
  * Canon is filled with examples of telepaths being trafficked by normals both on-world and off.
  * Telepaths already face enough violence at the hands of normals on Earth - but off-world, it's much worse.
  * Violence against telepaths is so routine - and normals care so little about the value of telepath lives - that even Ivanova herself (one of the show's sacred "good guys"!) [attempted to murder a telepath on Io station](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10507632), and faced no consequences. None. No court martial - canon actually treats the incident _as a joke_.
  * In _Dust to Dust_ , Ivanova also ordered her subordinates in C&C to fire up the station's defense grid and shoot Bester's ship out of the sky, planning to blame it on a "malfunctioning" defense grid. Cold-blooded, premeditated murder was only averted because Sheridan cancels the order and tells her not to do it, because she would be "throwing away her career," because "it's not worth it," and because Delenn had come up with a different plan to keep Bester from carrying out his mission (to, you know, save the galaxy from a dangerous Dust dealer, whose activities eventually led to the deaths of six people on the station). Whereas I gave Sheridan the benefit of the doubt about the incident on Io Station (maybe he didn't directly cover for her, and found out about it later?), as I feared, I may have been overgenerous. This case is explicit and crystal clear. He sees it happen, and he covers for Ivanova's premeditated, attempted murder of a telepath - and police officer! - because he's "looking out for her career." (And because he thinks he has a "better plan" - to assault said police officer by forcing him to take sleepers, or be surrounded by Minbari telepaths everywhere he goes!)
  * And let's not forget Sinclair punching Bester in the face in _Mind War_ , causing him to lose control of Ironheart, who then kills Kelsey.
  * And let's not forget Ivanova's (very serious) threats against Harriman Grey's life, in _Eyes_ \- and how the "good guys" leave him unconscious on the floor at the end, because who cares? He's a telepath.
  * And oh so many more examples that are too many to list. (I haven't even started in on Garibaldi yet!)
  * If that's how little the "good guys" value telepath lives, imagine the _bad guys_.
  * Serial killers like the one on Beta Colony are the exception, rather than the rule. Random acts of violence are the norm. Human traffickers are the norm, too.



The legal background comes later - explaining in detail how the justice system, from the rules of evidence to the structure of the legal system itself, has been intentionally set up (BY NORMALS) as to prevent telepaths from achieving any real justice or protection from violence at the hands of normals. It's designed to do exactly the opposite - to "protect normals from telepaths," as if telepaths are the real threat (and all that garbage about telepaths needing to be oppressed to "keep society safe from them" that [dates back to Crawford](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10324169/chapters/22823876)). See also the mini history lesson [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10292036), about how normals took away "every right [telepaths] had."

Every right - including the right to a justice system that treated them as equals.

Every right - including the right to self-defense.

See for example Deadly Relations, p. 58, when Al Bester, then fourteen by normal age reckoning, is attacked by a normal for the _second time in two days_ , and this time decides to fight back: "Al came to the painful decision that he would have to break a regulation. He probably had already - [telepathically] pushing a normal, even in self-defense."

I also have not yet had the opportunity to cover the mentor/protege relationship between Bester and Byron, because _Behind the Gloves_ isn't yet at that time period. For simplicity's sake, I will do my best to sum it up:

  * Byron Gordon had been an orphan, and so Bester felt a personal fondness for him, having himself also been orphaned as a baby. He saw himself as a father figure to Byron, the way Sandoval Bey had once been to him.
  * Though Byron was a P12, he was sub-par as a Psi Cop. He wasn't very bright - to put it mildly. And though his heart was in the right place, he was consistently gullible, foolish and naive, and everyone who worked with him could see it, except for Bester (who didn't _want_ to see it, no matter how obvious it was).
  * A desk job with little responsibility would have suited Byron just fine - he had never been cut out for field work, especially off-world - but Bester had considerable influence in the Corps, and got him assigned to the Corps' most elite squadron, Bester's own Black Omegas.
  * This was a bad idea.



By the time the Black Omegas intercepted Director Johnston on Ganymede (so Bester could assassinate Johnston), everyone in the Black Omegas knew what was going on and why, except Byron. Byron knew nothing - he didn't know the base existed, why it had been built, or about cooperation between the Corps and EarthForce during the Earth-Minbari War (and since) - and Bester didn't tell him, either. Bester just tells him, "don't ask questions, Byron" and Byron's like "OK, goodnight."

When several hours later, Bester assassinates the director, Byron can't figure out what really happened. He _actually believes the cover story_ that rogue telepaths had planted a bomb under the ice of Ganymede, under the noses of both EarthForce and Psi Corps, in exactly the spot underground where the director would hold his meeting with Bester, they had detonated their bomb at exactly that moment, and Bester had been injured trying to save the director. Never mind that the base was 100% secret, and that the director was going there, at that moment, was 100% secret - and how would the rogues know about this and plant a bomb _under the ice_ and fly away, all undetected? Rogue telepaths, under the ice on Ganymede? - no, he never figured out that there was anything fishy about the cover story, despite being right there when it all happened.

 _Everyone in the Corps back home knew it had been some kind of insider job_ , but this never occurred to Byron, because as I said, he's not the brightest bulb in the pack.

Despite what in retrospect should have been overwhelming evidence that Byron couldn't be trusted with serious responsibility - and there's no higher responsibility in the Corps than that of a field Psi Cop - Bester decided to test him anyway, to see if he could be trusted with what it _really_ takes to operate off-world. Deadly Relations, p. 260, distorts this test like its some kind of mafia ritual ("he hadn't been marked, initiated") - when it was nothing of the sort. It was, however, an important test, one that Byron not only failed, but failed to even _understand_.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious that Byron would fail, but Bester's personal fatherly feelings for the young man distorted his better judgment - with disastrous consequences.

\-----

So with this in mind, we turn to the events described in _Phoenix Rising,_ and covered Deadly Relations p. 262-263. Let's start with the show's presentation (from Byron's point of view, naturally).

Byron, to Lyta, in _Phoenix Rising_ :

**"It was supposed to be a simple interception. We'd gotten word about a covert operation, smuggling telepaths into some outer colonies where it would be harder for us to find them."**

As I explained [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12827937), these telepaths were not merely being smuggled "into some outer colonies where it would be harder for us to find them" - they were being sold into slavery. I can only assume someone must have tried to explain this to Byron at some point, but perhaps he didn't understand it or believe it. (Or maybe he did, and canon just cropped it out.)

He's not too bright - he literally believed rogue telepaths had hidden a bomb under the ice, on the outer foundation of the super top secret joint EarthForce/Psi Corps base on Ganymede - and so I believe he actually believed those telepaths were heading for some colony where life would be better for them than back on Earth. Perhaps, at the time of the mission, he hadn't given the matter much thought - such missions to pick up smuggled telepaths were routine, and Byron's not too smart - but later, when he reflected back on what happened, this is what he came to believe.

He is idealistic and naive.

It's still not true. :(

(Lyta should know better, but that's another story.)

**"We surrounded the transport and demanded they turn over telepaths. Or we would use deadly force."**

Distortion.

They demanded that the ship's crew turn over the ten rogue telepaths they were carrying - and prepare to be boarded.

The ship's captain, rather than comply with this (very legal) order on the part of the police, refused. It became clear that she knew about the rogue telepaths being transported on her ship. Things got hot, and there was a reminder given to the ship that _we're the police_ , we're authorized to use force to board your ship and enforce the law, and _you will comply_.

This is parallel to US Coast Guard law when it comes to searches and seizures on ships:

            **The U.S. Coast Guard Boarding Policy:**

**Title 14 section 89 of the United States Code authorizes the U.S. Coast Guard to board vessels subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, anytime, any place upon the high seas and upon any waterway over which the United States has jurisdiction, to make inquires, examinations, inspections, searches, seizures, and arrests. The U.S. Coast Guard does _not_  require a warrant to conduct search, seizures, arrests over any United States Waterway or high seas. The U.S. Coast Guard also have full legal law enforcement power on any land under the control of the United States, as needed to complete any mission.**

In other words: We can board you to search for contraband (or smuggled telepaths), we can search anywhere on your ship - anywhere on your ship at all - and that's the law. And if you forcibly resist us, we will use force to board you.

Yes, they were trying to board the transport - because it would be _criminally stupid_ not to capture and scan the traffickers for names, faces, bank accounts, locations, contacts, etc.. The mission, remember, is not merely to rescue these particular ten telepaths from their traffickers, but to shut down the entire trafficking operation.

And Psi Cops have the authority to arrest normals who are committing crimes against telepaths (such as trafficking them), so again, this was entirely above board.

" **They did as they were told. They didn't have much choice."**

No shit, Byron.

The ship sent the ten telepaths out in escape pods, where the Corps picked them up. Byron decided the mission must be over now, and wanted to turn back, without arresting any of the traffickers.

**"Omega 7 to Omega 1. Blips are clear. Captured transport moving into position. All clear. We can head back now."**

**"Not yet, Omega 7. We got this batch, but there'll be others."**

Again, correct. That's why Bester gave the order to board the ship, find the smugglers, and arrest them.

Was Byron on the team that boarded the ship? Maybe not, since he's not the brightest. Either way, that's what happened - the Corps boarded the ship, they found the smugglers, arrested them, and sent the rest on their way.

_The Corps is here to keep you safe from rogue telepaths._

_Sorry for the inconvenience, and have a pleasant remainder of your journey!_

Byron's moral crisis came a bit later.

**"We need to send a message."**

**"All right. I'll arrange for them to be escorted to-"**

**"Negative, Omega 7. Lock all forward weapons on transport. Prepare to fire."**

Entirely untrue.

This is the show's lazy shortcut - they want to show Bester to be "evil," and they want to paint a picture that what led to Byron's moral crisis was morally "obvious" so he can be painted as a "good guy," love interest and even a "hero." His self-immolation helped trigger the Telepath War (good for mundanes), and that ended with the Corps being destroyed (also good for mundanes), so hey, let's just crop out everything that doesn't fit, yanno? What could make it more "obvious" that Bester is "evil," and the Corps is "evil," than to show Bester randomly, _for no logical reason whatsoever_ , ordering Byron to blow up an unarmed transport with maybe thousands of people on it? With only the justification that "they're just mundanes," and this is all about some kind of murderous anti-mundane racism?

Nope.

First, as I explained, he would have to be criminally stupid not to capture and scan the traffickers. Second, he would never order the destruction of the transport because the Corps exists (on paper) to protect normals from telepaths - and to order the destruction of an unarmed civilian transport "because he felt like it" _**WOULD BE A CHARTER VIOLATION**._

An incident like that - were a Psi Cop ever to commit such an act - could lead to the Senate abolishing (or restructuring) the Corps, it's so serious. The fallout from this incident would be catastrophic. There would certainly be no more Black Omegas after this - and can you imagine if anyone then found out that it had been Bester who killed Johnston? (Telepaths have no rights not to be scanned, pursuant to an investigation.)

No, he didn't do this.

"But they're out in space and no one would ever find out!" is a pretty pathetic excuse to justify the writing here. If "no one would find out," then what did Bester mean by "we need to send a message"?

Yes, people would investigate. And the writers expect us to believe that someone like Bester, who is the Corps' most decorated hero, who is so loyal to the Corps and all it stands for that [people think he was _literally_ born from the spirit of the Corps](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11112993), Al Bester, who has devoted his whole life, from his earliest childhood, to serving the Corps and being the very best Psi Cop to ever live, who literally just assassinated the director in order to save the Corps (and all of humanity), who would even risk his life and health to [volunteer himself as a subject in a secret experiment to study the workings of telepathy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10553654) \- the writers would have us believe that he would one day, on a whim, to test Byron's loyalty, order him to commit a flagrant charter violation of the highest magnitude, _one that could put the whole Corps in jeopardy?!_

No. They're lying. That's not what happened at all.

\-----

What happened:

The Corps boarded the ship, found the people responsible, arrested them, and let the others (including the captain, though she had been complicit) go, unharmed.

Then they scanned the half a dozen or so smugglers. Was that illegal? Yes, because these are normals, but those laws, as I said here and will explain elsewhere, were written to privilege normals at the expense of telepaths. For Psi Cops always, without exception, to follow those mundane-written laws to the letter would mean to guarantee the continued abuses of telepaths all across the Earth Alliance, such as here. (For another example of Bester breaking the mundane-written rules to protect telepath lives, see Ysidra's story [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10903194) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10943865).)

These guys were seasoned smugglers. They'd probably been caught before - possibly many times before - by authorities who follow the law and brought them back to Earth to stand trial. And then because of the way the Earth Alliance justice system is set up (to keep the systems of power and oppression in place), they either got off, or got small sentences, got out, and went right back to their highly lucrative career of smuggling telepaths into slavery.

(As the African proverb goes, "Corn can't expect justice from a court composed of chickens.")

These guys weren't "innocents." They were repeat offenders, and guilty as sin. Bester knew that, because he'd scanned them. And Bester was pretty pissed off that these same guys had gotten away with trafficking his people into slavery, again and again, with hardly a slap on the wrist from the so-called "justice system," just because the victims were telepaths, and the perpetrators were normals.

So yes, he did say "we need to send a message." The message was to the other smugglers out there, who take telepaths' life savings and traffic them into slavery to be sold, beaten, raped and murdered, like Fatima Cristoban so long ago-

NOT ON MY WATCH, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Remember when Lyta admits in _Face of the Enemy_ , about how when she and Bester (and the local Corps station chief) helped locate, stop and punish the serial killer on Beta Colony:

"...we did what we had to do because no one else would"?

Yeah. When it comes to justice for telepaths off-world (and too often on Earth as well), if the Corps doesn't do it, _no one else will._

That's what the test of Byron was really about: Do you have the grit to do what it really takes to protect our people? Or are you a coward, a mundane kiss-up who will always follow their rules, their regulations, and their laws, _even as our people suffer and die?_

He ordered Byron to shoot the prisoners.

\-----

**"Sir, they're unarmed. We can't just-"**

**"Prepare to fire, Omega 7."**

**"I can't."**

**"I gave you an order, Byron. Execute the order or face the consequences."**

More of the same distortions.

Yes, the captured smugglers were "unarmed," and tied up, but so what?

And yes, when Byron hesitated, Bester said, "execute the order or face the consequences" - meaning Byron would be kicked out of the Black Omegas and reassigned to a desk job back on Earth (where, imo, he belonged).

**"They're just mundanes, Byron."**

Yes, this he said.

**"And it's them or you."**

No, it was never "them or you." This may be a distortion - there may have been some dialogue about how in the end, it's going to come down to a war between normals and telepaths, that in the end, it's them or us. Something like that. That's what I suspect.

**"You wanted to run with the big boys, now you have to show that you're up to it. Are you? Are you up to it, Byron?"**

**"I knew he was serious... knew he wanted me bloody, just like him. I knew they would kill me if I didn't do as I was told."**

Another lie... this wasn't about "wanting him bloody."

And geez, Byron had been a Psi Cop for years, and he'd been in the Black Omegas for years - he'd never been in a firefight? This writing makes it seem like he just realized all of a sudden, OH WOW, BESTER HAS A PATTERN OF "BEING BLOODY" AND KILLING PEOPLE, OMG I NEVER KNEW UNTIL HE GAVE THIS ORDER! This accusation is a distortion - Bester only hurts/kills mundanes in extreme cases, where there's no other choice (e.g. Endra on Mars (after she threw a knife and almost killed Ysidra), the incident on Beta, Edgars, etc.). And if it were true, really, Byron never knew? Until right then?

Also, as I already went to great lengths to point out, [the Corps does not kill its own](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12861987). The show is lying again. Bester did say Byron would "face the consequences" for failing to comply, but that meant being kicked out of the Black Omegas and given a desk job back on Earth, or some other suitable job for someone who lacks the backbone to actually do what's _necessary_ in the real world.

**"So, God help me, I pulled the trigger. After all, they were just mundanes. When I got back, I tried to file a report on what had happened, but nobody wanted to know."**

Right - because everyone who saw the report knew that what Bester had done to those smugglers was both necessary and right.

**"So I left."**

Faked his death and went AWOL, yes, as explained in the book - and he ran away still unable to understand what the test had been all about, still unable to understand how completely broken the Earth Alliance justice system is (and why it remains so), and why this leaves telepaths no choice but to resort to vigilante justice if they're to get any justice (and safety) at all.

**"I swore I'd never let innocents be harmed like that again."**

No innocents were harmed, except by the mundane scum who trafficked them in the first place.

**"Swore to find a better way for us, for our people. Without violence, without preying on our own kind, or letting others prey on us."**

Oh, that sounds like music to mundane ears, eh? I'll just lead a bunch of rogues off into space myself, and hey, we'll find a "better way" ourselves! In the middle of fucking nowhere!

/sigh/

The book distorts this mess even more, having Bester looking at the exploding ship and thinking, "And then there was light. It was the most beautiful thing he had seen in a long time. The transport shredded under the impact of Byron's weapons, and the pitiful mindshrieks of the mundanes were swallowed by night."

Oh good grief.

But yes, Byron's moral crisis over the whole thing was real. He didn't like breaking the law, and he couldn't understand how the law itself could be so rigged - intentionally so - that breaking it (and sending a message) could be the only possible course that ensures a modicum of safety for telepaths (through deterrence). All he could see were five or six tied up smugglers, and his mentor (father figure, even) telling him to shoot them ("just mundanes") as some sort of horrible test of loyalty (to him personally, rather than to some higher principle of what being a Psi Cop should be about - protecting one's family).

The Corps is Mother and Father.

Psi Cops act in a "parental" role in the system - and if it were _your children_ being sold, trafficked, beaten, and raped, if you knew that no one else would do a damn thing to protect them... if you knew that if you let these guys go, they would do it again, to someone else's children - what would _you_ do?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm reminded of the line from the Keith Urban song, "For You":
> 
> _You don't think about right,_   
>  _You don't think about wrong,_   
>  _You just do what you gotta do_   
>  _to defend your own._
> 
> _And I'd do the same,_   
>  _For you._


End file.
